We just couldn't let the week pass without posting this - this past Saturday, Living Liberally celebrated its 2nd annual celebration & fundraiser in New York City. And while we were fortunate enough to be joined in person by some incredible guests such as Congressman Jerry Nadler and State Senator Eric Schneiderman, we had another very special guest via video:

Howard Dean's video congratulations is part of a very big month for our chapters and our supporters - you can expect more videos like that one in the next few weeks, and here's why:

On the right, you see our tack-map, with one tack for every LL chapter in the nation - 246, to be exact. In fact, there are only four states missing: Hawaii, North Dakota, Oklahoma and West Virginia. As we mentioned here last week (and as Dean alludes to), we've made it our mission this month, Drinking Liberally's 5th anniversary month, to hit the 50-state mark, reaching out to our progressive allies in the Aloha, Peace Garden, Sooner and Mountain States, respectively.

And a final shout-out to our honoree, and the first recipient of the annual Putnam award, the Political Director of Credo Mobile/Working Assets, Becky Bond. Becky has done some of the most important behind-the-scenes work building progressive infrastructure and opposing telecom community and illegal wiretapping, not to mention that she has been a crucial and consistent supporter of Living Liberally, and she delivered a rousing address on the importance of the work that progressive activists do day in, day out. Congratulations, Becky!

Iron Man is a good superhero movie. Really. If you like that kind of thing, you should probably check it out.

For this genre, the acting is great. Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Bridges are pretty much flawless at turning well-drawn, larger than life (see: Jeff Bridges' shaved head and big-time beard) comic book characters into real people...or, at least, real characters. The special effects are top notch. The science-fiction element of the movie, including the design technology used by Downey Jr. as weapons manufacturer and designer Tony Stark, and the glowing electromagnet that keeps his heart going, is really cool.

And then there's the politics of Iron Man: any movie that includes middle eastern terrorists and American weapons manufacturers double-dealing under the table is bound to raise a few political questions. So where do Iron Man's politics stand?

There are liberal aspects to the film. Stark Industries is basically a takeoff on Lockheed Martin, similar logos and all. Jeff Bridges's character Obadiah Stane (what a name) represents many of the problems of the American military-industrial complex, basically that a company making dangerous weapons and also thirsting for profit cannot always be trusted and might even work to promote war or help the enemies to keep a steady cash flow.

The key transformation of the film occurs when the debonair and amoral Tony Stark finds himself imprisoned in a cave in Afghanistan after being captured by terrorists who somehow have tons of Stark Industries weapons. He then builds his Iron Man prototype suit, escapes from the cave and swears off weapon making forever - as Rolling Stone puts it, "a switch to peace politics."

Here's the part that I don't get: Stark swears off evil weapon making and proposes to fight for peace... by building a better weapon, the Iron Man suit. The line that best summarizes Tony Stark's original (pre-cave) political views, goes something like: "Peace means having the biggest stick." I just don't see how this post-transformation approach is any different.

By comparison, the liberal stuff is developed in a downright superficial way compared to the spirit of vigilantism that pervades throughout the core of the movie. One could even argue that Iron Man's true message is that instead of depending on the clueless military or the corrupt businessmen to fight terrorism, we should just suit up and take 'em on ourselves.

Anyway, while Iron Man's political sentiments range from Super-Liberal to NRAesque, it's a darn good action movie, and worth ten bucks.

Oh, and when you see it: STAY UNTIL AFTER THE CREDITS. I won't say why, just do it.

For a free country, we’ve got an awfully tyrannical food chain. Our current system of food production is really founded on a contempt for life; it pummels the planet and exploits migrant farm workers, defying the laws of both nature and man. If we truly are what we eat, I guess that makes us a nation of nature-hating misanthropes.

We’ve shoehorned corn into every corner of Iowa, and shoveled it into every cow--or so it seemed to me as I watched the screening of King Corn that Eating Liberally co-hosted this week at the Tank with our friends from the Green Edge Collaborative. We’ve taken the already fertile soil of our heartland and jacked it up on steroids, to grow a bazillion bushels of a variety of corn you can’t even eat till it’s been processed into some sort of by-product.

We coax an astonishing amount of corn from each monocropped acre by saturating this precious topsoil with fertilizers and herbicides, and then we convert this nutritionally bankrupt bounty into high fructose corn syrup, or feed for cows whose digestive systems literally can’t stomach it (hello, E. coli), or the eco-disaster we call corn-based ethanol.

As King Corn’s food court jesters Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis discovered in their pilgrimage to our feedcorn fiefdom, this ultra-efficient method of growing corn has created ever larger farms run by fewer and fewer farmers, draining the soul of our rural communities even as it depletes the soil (and drives our diabetes epidemic, and fuels global warming, and makes cheap spaghetti sauces sickeningly sweet, and--oh, nevermind.)

And this is the model of agriculture that Wall Street, K Street, and Main Street all celebrate as a shining example of good ol’ American know-how that the rest of the world would do well to emulate. Feedcorn is on the march!

We were fortunate to have Ian Cheney on hand at our screening to do a Q & A, and the questions were pretty much the same ones people peppered Michael Pollan with at an Omnivore’s Dilemma reading I attended in April of 2006 (Pollan, an advisor to the King Corn crew, appears in the film expounding on the evils of industrial agriculture against the backdrop of his own abundant veggie garden, including a suitably monstrous patch of dinosaur kale!)

What folks want to know, after reading Pollan’s books or seeing a film like King Corn, is “What can we do about this awful food system?”

The knee-jerk response is, of course, to endorse community supported agriculture and farmers’ markets, but Cheney noted that we run the risk of creating an alternative food chain that serves only those fortunate enough to live in the more affluent communities where farmers’ markets and upscale stores like Whole Foods thrive.

Living at the Ethicurean epicenter of NYC, it’s easy for me to opt out of our crappy food chain; I can walk to Union Square and shop at the Greenmarket four days a week all year round, and whatever I can’t find there I can get at the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s that are a stone’s throw from the Greenmarket. There are several mom-and-pop health food stores in our neck of the woods, too.

So it’s easy for me to follow Pollan’s advice to stay out of the supermarkets. But a few miles north of us, in East Harlem, they’ve hardly got any supermarkets left to stay out of. As the New York Times reported last Monday:

A continuing decline in the number of neighborhood supermarkets has made it harder for millions of New Yorkers to find fresh and affordable food within walking distance of their homes, according to a recent city study. The dearth of nearby supermarkets is most severe in minority and poor neighborhoods already beset by obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

To us farmers’ market fanatics, the very notion of a New York supermarket as a source for fresh, healthy food seems laughable; the typical supermarket is a food desert to us, with aisle after aisle of mysterious food-like substances encased in plastic and no grass-fed anything. But when your only sources for food are bodegas and fast food joints, a supermarket that actually sells fresh--though far-traveled--fruits and vegetables is a step up.

No wonder more and more city dwellers are becoming urban farmers, as another New York Times article noted yesterday; communities decried as food deserts are creating their own oases by reclaiming unused lots where they grow fruits and vegetables for themselves and even sell the surplus to others.

The Times article heralds the revival of urban agriculture that’s taking root all around the country, with the help of organizations like Milwaukee’s Growing Power, and NYC’s own GreenThumb and Just Foods, two groups who’ve done so much to support our community gardeners and local farmers. I had the pleasure of hearing Growing Power’s founder, Will Allen, speak at the Food & Society conference in Arizona last week and came away convinced that Growing Power’s one-acre farm represents the future of urban agriculture.

As the Times notes, this “one-acre farm crammed with plastic greenhouses, compost piles, do-it-yourself contraptions, tilapia tanks and pens full of hens, ducks and goats…grossed over $220,000 last year from the sale of lettuces, winter greens, sprouts and fish to local restaurants and consumers.”

Allen’s model demonstrates that city dwellers do have the capacity to produce at least some of their own food in an eco-friendly, socially responsible manner. And as more and more folks become aware of the rampant abuse that’s a hallmark of industrial agriculture, from cruelly confined chickens to Florida’s enslaved migrant farm workers, people are seeking alternative food chains untarnished by institutionalized exploitation and environmental degradation.

For a really comprehensive and inspiring look at the enormous potential of this movement to provide less privileged folks with an abundance of fresh, affordable produce while building community, preserving open space and creating an environmentally beneficial habitat, check out “Vitalizing the Vacant” from Thoughts On The Table blogger Annie Myers, who never ceases to astonish me with her clear, beautiful prose and even clearer observations.

Annie’s one of a dozen or so twenty-somethings I’ve met who blow me away with their commitment to changing our world; I was too cynical and alienated when I was that age to do much more than mouth off about our decaying culture. I’m doing that still, while folks like Annie and the Real Food Challenge students and “Greenhorns” filmmaker Severine Von Tscharner Fleming are running around remaking the world the way they want it to be. Considering how badly we've messed things up, it’s the least we can do to cheer them on.

It’s a safe bet that diabetics outnumber crackheads in the U.S. by a big fat margin, but the corn cartel’s got carte blanche to fill us (and our gas tanks) with their Beltway-blessed by-products. So U.S. drug policies focus more on coke addicts than Coke addicts, despite the fact that soda’s the more abused substance.

We’ve got a knack for waging the wrong wars, lately, and we can’t even keep our conflicts from conflicting. Just look at how the War on Terror has undermined the War on Drugs; last year, according to the Globe and Mail, Afghanistan’s poppy crops hit a historic high, if you will, providing more than 92 percent of the world’s opium and heroin. U.S. officials estimate that the Taliban derives anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of its income from opiate exports.

Poppy production skyrocketed after we invaded Afghanistan in 2001; at a time when shortages of rice and wheat are shaking things up all over the world, the Globe and Mail reports that this year’s poppy crop “will produce 40 per cent more than the world demand — which means that huge quantities will be stockpiled somewhere.”

Afghanistan’s farmers would actually prefer to grow onions than opiates, but the warlords and the Taliban have pretty much hijacked their fields, forcing them to grow poppies. Talk about a Catch 22—we can’t root out the poppies till we uproot the warlords, whose power is fueled by those fields of fuzzy pods.

And our proposed solution to this problem is to carpet-bomb Afghanistan with an herbicide called glyphosate, aka Roundup, a Monsanto-manufactured weed killer. Ah, the military-industrial complex-is there any world crisis that Monsanto can’t solve?

John McCain’s all in favor of using Roundup to rein in the poppy posse, but the locals look darkly on the prospect of being under a cloud of chemicals. American officials insist that glyphosate is “one of the world’s safest herbicides,” according to the New York Times, which cites a State Department fact sheet claiming that glyphosate is “less toxic than common salt, aspirin, caffeine, nicotine and even vitamin A.”

But Britain, which heads the anti-narcotics effort in Afghanistan, thinks this tactic’s toxic in more ways than one, as does the Afghan government. So the search for a solution drags on while the buds and the bad guys flourish.

OK, so we’re totally losing on the heroin/opium front in the Golden Crescent, but aren’t we making some progress in our efforts to curb South American coke production?

Well, funny story, actually; our campaign to convince South America to stop growing coca leaves and switch to legitimate crops hasn’t made a dent in the world’s cocaine supply, but it’s just about destroyed America’s asparagus farmers.

Sadly, the MSM’s too busy focusing on the follies of those other American Spears, Britney and Jamie Lynn, to soil its shallow soul by reporting that the American asparagus farmer is an endangered species. So it’s left to us lefty, dirt-encrusted bloggers to tell you about the superb “stalkumentary,” Asparagus!, which I’m delighted to announce is now available on DVD after reaping a bumper crop of prizes and plaudits; New York magazine called it “oddly brilliant.”

Asparagus! documents the alternately hilarious and heartbreaking saga of Oceana County, Michigan, which was the asparagus capital of the world for thirty years. Then came the Andean Trade Preference Act, which gave Peru the right to export its fresh asparagus into the U.S. tax-free as an incentive to discourage drug production and trafficking. Thanks to this obscure bit of legislation, Peru’s now overtaken Oceana to become “the world’s largest asparagus industry,” and the good farmers of Michigan are facing bankruptcy.

Filmmakers Anne De Mare and Kirsten Kelly put a poignant and compelling face on this freakish case of collateral damage, letting the local folks weave their tale of War On Drug-induced woe in an entertaining and infuriating film that will leave you shouting “S.O.S.”, as in Save Our Spears!

Ironically, there’s $15 million in aid to American asparagus farmers tucked into the current Farm Bill, in order to offset the unforeseen consequences of the Andean Trade Preference Act. See Asparagus!, and you’ll see why Bird’s Eye is right on target, while Wal-Mart misses the mark. Just say no, indeed! To Peruvian asparagus, that is.

With McCain likely to face Obama in the general election, it appears his staff has realized they have an uphill marketing battle ahead of them. Obama has some of the best marketing money can buy: he has a brilliant logo, multiple slogans, a pretty face, and he's even laid claim to the words "change" and "hope." The following memo by a high level McCain staffer was accidentally leaked to the press, demonstrating the McCain campaign's struggle to find the perfect slogan.

It's been nearly five years since we started drinking liberally in a backyard in Hell's Kitchen. In May, 2003, a few weeks after Mission Accomplished, progressives weren't very hopeful...and we regularly heard the joke: "Guess liberals need a few beers to dull the pain."

Our response: "No, we need a few beers while we organize." From the start, our social club wasn't about sharing depression -- it was about sharing ideas, energy and commitment.

People are now Drinking Liberally all over the country, and it spreads because local liberals grab hold and make it happen....sometimes in the unlikeliest of areas.

Our fifth chapter, beating out such liberal hotbeds as Boston and Austin, was Boise, Idaho, leading Atrios to demand of his readership why Idaho had a chapter and Philadelphia didn't. (A Philadelphia group launched within 24 hours of that blog post; the Boise chapter still meets, and has been visited by their Mayor.)

Salt Lake City -- in a deep red state not known for liberals or drinks -- has a booming chapter. There are two clubs in South Dakota, and three in Mississippi. The Idaho Falls chapter (it always comes back to Idaho) has been involved in local anti-war activism, as have our Wyoming groups.

So...what's the matter with West Virginia?

Actually: West Virginia, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Hawaii. Those are the four hold-out states left as we reach our five-year mark, with no spots for liberals to congregate and organize over a few drinks. But not for long.

Drinking Liberally turns 5 on May 29th. We're kicking off our anniversary month with a Living Liberally fundraiser this Saturday, May 10th, in New York City, honoring CREDO / Working Assets and their political director Becky Bond (with Open Lefters Matt Stoller and Mike Lux on the host committee). During the course of the month, we'll be launching a new website and new tools.

And we're going to hit all 50 states for the first time. If I have to raise a pint in North Dakota myself, we're going to do it.

But I'm hoping I won't have to travel to North Dakota (at least not this month). The 240+ chapters that exist weren't started by me -- they were started by you -- liberals that wanted to gather, build community, share stories and a few pitchers. And now we need you to help realize the social parallel to Dean's 50-State Strategy: our own 50-Bar Strategy, promoting democracy one pint at a time.

Before Jeremiah "Obama's Pastor" Wright spews even more nonsense, and quotes even more ambassadors, we want to shed some light on the brilliant gems uttered by some of McCain's own spiritual advisers, Pastor John Hagee and Reverend Rod Parsley. When Hagee endorsed McCain, because he is a man of principle, McCain said he was "very honored by Pastor John Hagee's endorsement." Reverend Parsley calls McCain a "strong, true, consistent conservative" and McCain calls Parsley "a spiritual adviser." Because the liberal media refuses to give any credit to McCain, it is up to us to be fair and balanced. So here are the top 10 Memorable Quotes said by McCain's religious advisers:

1. "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist."
- Pastor John Hagee in his book What Every Man Wants in a Woman (Charisma House, 2005)

2. "The Quran teaches that [all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews]. Yes, it teaches that very clearly."
-Pastor John Hagee

3. "I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans...I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God for that...There was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades.... The Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment."
-Pastor John Hagee

4. "The military will have difficultly recruiting healthy and strong heterosexuals for combat purposes. Why? Fighting in combat with a man in your fox hole that has AIDS or is HIV positive is double jeopardy."
- Pastor John Hagee on Don't Ask Don't Tell

5. "[Gay marriage] will open the door to incest, to polygamy, and every conceivable marriage arrangement demented minds can possibly conceive. If God does not then punish America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."
- Pastor John Hagee

6. "It is impossible to call yourself a Christian and defend homosexuality. There is no justification or acceptance of homosexuality.... Homosexuality means the death of society because homosexuals can recruit, but they cannot reproduce."
- Pastor John Hagee

7. "Only a Spirit-filled woman can submit to her husband's lead. It is the natural desire of a woman to lead through feminine manipulation of the man...Fallen women will try to dominate the marriage. The man has the God-given role to be the loving leader of the home."
- Pastor John Hagee in his book What Every Man Wants in a Woman (Charisma House, 2005)

8. "I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore."
- Rod Parsley in Silent No More (Charisma House, 2005)

10. "Only 1 percent of the homosexual population in America will die of old age. The average life expectancy for a homosexual in the United States of America is 43 years of age. A lesbian can only expect to live to be 45 years of age. Homosexuals represent 2 percent of the population, yet today they're carrying 60 percent of the known cases of syphilis."
- Rod Parsley

I was being interviewed by a radio station about a snarky article I’d written for a paper-and-ink (and also online) magazine, and they referred to me as “journalist Amanda Milstein.” This struck me as clearly false (although far be it from me to argue with them, given it sounds better than “part-time job-holding, part-time interning, soon-to-be grad student Amanda Milstein”) - and it looks like I'm not the only one who thinks so. One of the arguments made by Clay Shirkey in his new book Here Comes Everybody (which Matt mentioned here yesterday ) is that the title “journalist” is increasingly meaningless when anyone can write a blog post about an issue and publish it — and even if they are blogging about an issue as trivial as a lost phone, it is possible for them to get a large audience.

Shirky begins by describing a Gutenberg-era pamphlet written in defense of scribes, whose jobs were being taken over by the printing press. The pro-scribe argument was printed off on a printing press for maximum efficiency — it’s always bad if your chief defender can’t even be bothered to use your services. All much like how my childhood best friend’s instant messenger screenname was something like luddite77; if you’re bothering to have a screenname, you’re clearly not devoting yourself to smashing machines.

Shirky takes this prologue as a launching-pad to deal with multiple aspects of the internet community-building revolution, from the efforts of Wikipedians and lay-run online groups to help people navigate software, to the the power of informal online photo-sharing in areas where important news events are occurring. To hear Shirky extend the metaphor, as the masses are storming communication, those now called "journalists" may well soon be the scribes of our era. The ways we meet people, communicate with friends, form community and many other facets of our lives will dramatically change as well.

While I found the book a bit tedious to read, it was clearly well-researched, and had much to say that will help people understand the new dissemination of information we are witnessing in our society. If you're interested in a nibble of Shirky's ideas before you commit to the many-course meal of his book, check out his blog first.

Sometimes I wish I could cast off modern technology and just go hang out with people in the park, and potluck in my spare time. And then I run off to send those I will soon be picnicking with a frantic g-chat message to make sure that someone knows to bring plates, check my friends' blogs to make sure I am updated on the key events of their lives — and still kind of wish I could communicate via loud drum. But, as Shirky points out, the technological and communication revolution is irreversibly upon us, and we just need to figure out how to adjust to the huge new swaths of information that are now available. I personally plan on configuring my google reader to scream at me to go outside instead of keeping up on my friends' blogs — right after I change my screenname to luddite88.